In 2004, F295 began its life as a simple, but active web forum. We united people across the world in the pursuit exploratory photographic practice — F295 was a social media site before the rise of social media!

In 2007, we hosted our first symposium and to date we’ve featured over 120 unique artists lectures in multiple events in Pittsburgh, New York, and San Francisco. Some of these lectures were collected and included in my 2014 book Photography Beyond Technique (Focal Press). The symposium weekend also features exhibitions and workshops by world renowned experts teaching hands-on classes and sharing their knowledge. Participants in our workshops are often university level professors and instructors who have taken the knowledge from this experience back to their students and institutions. The learning pyramid is huge and we’re gratified to see many of our former attendees (and their students) creating compelling work, having solo exhibitions, and winning awards!

Last year we redesigned the website to be more inclusive and introduce new topics while keeping our focus on the creative aspect of the art. We featured over 25 different photo-books during our photo-book feature week, a wide array of interviews with a diverse mix of photographers, editors, publishers, and artists, book reviews, gear overviews, and a lot more. In an attempt to find exciting original work to feature we have an ongoing call for submissions (free!).

In planning for the 2014 Symposium (May 28-31) we have had our greatest response yet to the call for papers! And we’ve expanded the event to feature two new sessions and two full days of lectures. This promises to be the best conference yet.

And, in possibly our greatest accomplishment to date F295 has moved into a “temporary field office” while construction of our new HQ is completed. It’s our hope to begin kicking off our ambitious exhibition, residency, and publication schedule along with a host of other events in early 2015.

All of these things have taken an enormous amount of time, energy, and money. In order to keep everything move forward we need your help. Please become a member today. We’ve long tried to operate on the “people will contribute what they can, when they can,” but sadly that model hasn’t really worked for a long time.

To put it in the clearest possible terms – without your direct & immediate support F295 will need to profoundly trim services & operations.

We’ve long been an advocate for the art of photography, unique/non-commercial photographic approaches, and for many different artists work. I hope I can count you on to be an advocate for F295 today. Please become a member. Thank you!

Please share this among your friends, colleagues, and others.

I hope you’ll consider becoming a member now! As a bonus, all new and current members are eligible to have a piece in the F295 Salon Exhibition in May!

About F295

F295 existed between 2004-2015 as the premier destination of image makers seeking to push the boundaries of photographic practice through the intentional use and combination of photographic process and technique combined with a deliberate choice of subject and content to create work that's brilliantly exciting. The organization held 7 semi-annual symposia that featured over 100 unique lectures, over 40 workshops, and several exhibitions. People from around the world joined together in Pittsburgh PA to celebrate and explore this exciting and unique form of contemporary photographic practice.